Calm Yourself: Short Humor Volume III

By James Sarver

The third volume of the short humor of James E. Sarver. This volume features a number of pieces inspired by, and about, Korea, where the author spent five years teaching and another six recovering.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781716237461

Book preview

also by

James E. Sarver

short humor

words fail me

with tongue

short novels

Hard In Cambodia

The Insurance Dick

novels

MARY MOTOR

THE IDIOT

memoir

Probably True Stories

I Hate All Children Everywhere

CALM YOURSELF

short humor

volume iii

James E. Sarver

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any resemblance to any person or event, living or dead,

is purely coincidental.

Aside from two persons, living, and one event, dead.

CALM YOURSELF

Copyright © 2022 by James E. Sarver

All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-716-23746-1

for

professor peter schickele

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION      1

PART I – STUFF & NONSENSE

93-YEAR-OLD WOWS ’EM AT WRIGLEY      5

WORLD FACTBOOK UPDATE      9

LEARNING      12

QUOTATIONS FROM CHAIRMAN MAO, VOLUME 2      16

ALLIGATOR TAMERS      21

SOME DISEASES, AND THEIR TREATMENTS      26

THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT      30

EVERY STORY      32

TEN MOST WANTED      41

CRAYOLA SEES RED      44

VAMP IRE      45

THE INSTITUTE      52

TWENTY-ONE THESES      62

FOURWAY      65

REBOOT      79

GUYS I’M DATING      82

THE RAINBOW NIGHT      87

CHAPLAIN RAY, OF MGM in Life’s A B-Movie, Love’s A B-Word      95

WHAT GOLDFINGER WAS THINKING AS HE WAS

SUCKED OUT THE AIRPLANE WINDOW      105

PART II – KOREA

DOWNTOWN DAEGU SATURDAY NIGHT      113

NONGAE      125

K-POP LATEST: THE LATEST IN K-POP!      132

KELLO LIDDY      136

HEESEONG REPORTS HOME      144

DIARY OF A KOREAN KID      150

INTRODUCTION

This volume differs from its predecessors in that it is split into two parts, Bad and Worse. Which is which is for the reader to decide.

The first half of this book, Stuff & Nonsense, is more of the short humor you’ve come to know and, if not love, at least answer the phone calls of, in the first two volumes, Words Fail Me and With Tongue. The second half, Korea, includes pieces written during my five years in Japan. These years are memoir’d in other volumes, Probably True Stories and I Hate All Children Everywhere, but what’s here are the short humor pieces inspired by, and about, Korea. Originally these were to have been included in Probably True Stories, but the more I wrote about Korea in a non-fiction vein, the more I realized that no one would be able to tell where the non-fiction left off and the fiction began.

These pieces are, at this point, historical artifacts. Most of my writing nowadays is (relatively) longer-form — see the above-mentioned, plus short (but much lengthier than the pieces herein) novels Hard In Cambodia and The Insurance Dick and the bigger, fatter novels Mary Motor and The Idiot.¹ (With more to come.)² The most recent work in this present volume is the Chaplain Ray piece, written two years ago. Most of the pieces, in both sections, were written while I was in Taiwan. Or Hong Kong. Where was I again? Somewhere in Asia, I think.

A large majority of the pieces in all three books were written in two, if you’ll pardon the language, spurts of productivity. The first was the summer of 2012, just before deciding to go to ...Mongolia?, and the second was the spring of 2013, after finishing the first drafts of both The Insurance Dick and Mary Motor.³ (Guam — or was it Malaysia? — Myanmar? — did it start with an M? — did phenomenal things for my writing output.) Why should these spurts have happened when they did, where they did?

Heck if I know. I’ve always looked at my writing, particularly the humor — which, let’s face it, is pretty much all my writing is — as having nothing to do with me, and more to do with thoughts, impressions, characters, stories, jokes, that are just floating out there in the aether, which my brain happens, by purest chance, to intersect. Like a dart thrown in a pub.

Which may sound as if it’s a defense I’m flagpoling before trial, but nonetheless it is true. I can’t take any of the credit — or any of the legal liability — for what follows. I can only take the royalties.

PART I

STUFF

&

NONSENSE

93-YEAR-OLD WOWS ’EM

AT WRIGLEY

⁴

Grady Butters has faced the best. He’s faced Clemens. He’s faced Schilling. He’s faced Randy Johnson. He even faced, in his first year in the Majors, Nolan Ryan, whose fastball, says Butters, hit the catcher’s mitt before it even left his hand. But Grady Butters, twenty-four-year veteran of Major League Baseball, has never seen anything quite like the Chicago Cubs’ Mickey Hinder.

He’s…extraterrestrial, declaims Butters, searching for just the right word. "He throws and it’s like there are six balls coming toward the plate. You just have to pick one and hope for the best."

Vic Pearl, All-Star second baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates, agrees. "I went to the optometrist after I faced him for the first time. Thought I was seeing quadruple. But Doc said my eyes were fine. It’s Mickey, man. He’s a sorcerer."

A sorcerer. All pitchers are sorcerers, or try to be: making a hitter think the ball is here when in fact the ball is there. But few have been as instantly and overwhelmingly successful at it as Michaelangelo Mickey Hinder.

Of course every baseball season throws up its share of phenoms, on the mound, in the field, at bat. But Mickey Hinder is different. Mickey Hinder is ninety-three years old.

*   *   *

He’s a small man, shrunken in his uniform, even though it was specially tailored for him. Standard sizes only go so low. His face is lined like a Los Angeles road map, and what’s left of his hair curls in tufts around his ears and in a U across the back of his head. His cap, too, looks one size too large; but this is deliberate, he says. That’s the way his great-great-grandkids wear theirs.

*   *   *

Fame and fortune have come very late to Mickey Hinder. He only joined the Cubs during this year’s spring training, after Cubs scout Vince Brooking watched him pitch in a local park in Hinder’s hometown of Wichita, Kansas. I never saw a ball do what his does, says Brooking. Even from the stands, it’s an optical illusion. You’d swear all nine guys in the field had let loose with pitches at the same time. He shakes his head in admiration, the longtime scout who used to think he’d seen it all. But it’s just Mickey.

The ninety-three-year old was offered a $25 million contract right then and there. I didn’t, laughs Brooking, have to ask twice.

Hinder joined the Cubs in Mesa, Arizona, in March, where he pitched more than well enough to make the starting roster. Once the season began he quickly established himself as the club’s ace, winning his first thirteen games and going 26-1, thus far, for the season. (His one loss came in a 1-0 game won by the Atlanta Braves when Chipper Jones made contact — a rarity, when Hinder pitches — and hit a routine fly ball that the Cubs’ right fielder misplayed into an inside-the-park home run.) In those twenty-six wins Mickey Hinder has racked up three no-hitters, two one-hitters, and that rarest of baseball triumphs, a perfect game. He has had, without doubt, the most dominating pitching season — rookie or otherwise — in the history of the game.

*   *   *

What’s Mickey’s secret? Would you believe…arthritis?

Yep, says Hinder. S’got my fingers lookin’ like five tree limbs fused together by lightning. The pain’s excruciating, but the money helps.

Many seniors suffer from arthritis.  How did Mickey realize his particular version of this affliction, for all its drawbacks, had also given him the ability to throw a well-nigh-unhittable pitch?

Few days after the author-itis — this is how Mickey pronounces the word — set in, last fall, I was watching a Cubs game and they were losing, like they always do, and I got mad and threw my remote at the TV. It spun and danced and whirled through the air like it was bouncing around an invisible pinball machine. I felt then I might have something special.

Something special indeed.

*  *  *

Physicist Tomas van der Slaft of the University of Toronto explains Mickey’s magic like this: The motion of a baseball is due to its spin. The ball falls or cuts or even appears to rise as a function of the spin imparted by the pitcher. In Mr. Hinder’s case, the spin is so rapid that the ball achieves interdimensional speeds and actually travels back and forth between dimensions. Thus the illusion — which is not really an illusion at all — of multiple balls appearing to the batter. What they are witnessing is an overlap of dimensions. The ball may be said to, for infinitesimal increments, exist in six, seven, eight, or even more places at once.

*  *  *

Success cannot be said to have gone to Mickey Hinder’s head. He is too old, and has lived too much, to be seduced by the trappings of life in the fast lane. But that’s not to say he hasn’t enjoyed his share of the spoils. Sure, he says, I get more tail than I used to. And younger ones, too. This one lovely lady the other night in St. Louis was only sixty-six years old! They love my hand — love to touch it, kiss it. And other things, but I won’t go into those in case Mother reads this.

Mickey’s mother is still alive?

Sure she is! Hunnerd and eighteen and still kickin’! ’Course that’s mostly a spastic thing, her leg moves by itself. So, we keep our distance.

Mickey also views his success with a realism uncommon among his much-less-seasoned peers. I’ll pitch long as I can. I ain’t gettin’ any younger, Lord knows. And the author-itis is only gonna get worse. My hand’ll be nothin’ but a claw. Down the road I won’t even be able to fit a ball between my fingers without breakin’ a few bones. He smiles, his brand-new dentures gleaming. But I’ll enjoy my time while it lasts.

*   *   *

On October 30th, the night before the first game of the World Series, which Mickey Hinder was scheduled to start for the Chicago Cubs, whom he had led to their first National League Championship since 1945, Mickey Hinder died of a heart attack so massive that it killed not only him, but the man standing next to him. The Cubs’ hopes were dashed. They were swept in the Series and disbanded two weeks later.

WORLD FACTBOOK UPDATE

Djibouti

Tiny country the size of a sidecar. Population of roughly fourteen, all of them related, none of them on speaking terms. Only natural resources are dirt and sunlight. Has a history of violent incursions from neighbors demanding the return of their hedge clippers. Current president has been in office since eight o’clock last night.

Outlook for the Future: Dim.

Latvia

Middle sister between the more memorable and vivacious Baltic nations of Lithuania and Estonia. Was once left stranded at the United Nations over the weekend and has never gotten over it. Feels neglected, unloved, and will probably grow up to be a television producer. Has been threatening to slide into the Baltic and disappear forever, but we’ve heard it all before.

Outlook for the Future: Years of therapy, followed by a tell-all memoir.

Surinam

South American Banana Republic, so-called not because of its unstable government but because its native garb is Chinos and shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Known for its hand-crafted nuclear devices. Tourist draws include the world’s largest bidet and a guy at the airport who’ll tell your fortune for a Snickers bar, or, if that’s unavailable, a Three Musketeers wrapper he can suck on. The people of Surinam are friendly and generous and slow to anger, but quick to clear the room when the cops show up.

Outlook for the Future: Mostly sunny, scattered clouds.

Benin

Small African nation that may be an optical illusion. Has remained unvisited by foreigners for more than a century. Last reports were that things were not going well, send more cocktail sauce. Benin’s non-strategic location ensures that it will continue to be ignored by mapmakers, satellites, and Google Earth.

Outlook for the Future: ?

Nauru

Not a country so much as a rock. Once a thriving exporter of bat guano, now a thriving importer of Lysol. The least-populated nation in the world, after the underwater remains of Atlantis. Was once the site of an atomic test on which the U.S. Navy received a C minus. Slowly recovering from decades of overapplication of hairspray.

Outlook for the Future: Bouncy but with hold.

Bhutan

Himalayan outpost known as the happiest country in Asia, which is like being the last lemming off the cliff. Its people are deeply spiritual but easily flummoxed